Quotidian

Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy and Women's Work is a little book by Kathleen Norris (1998, nonfiction, 10/10). I read it shortly after it was published ten years ago. Norris looks at the mysterious way that daily or quotidian stuff can open us up spiritually.

Laundry may seem an odd element in the realm of spirituality, but Norris points out that "women's work" such as laundry, cooking, and cleaning -- done repeatedly on a daily basis and seemingly never to completion -- can be seen as endless and dreary, domestic rituals to be gotten out of the way. But consider the enormous life-giving importance of feeding and clothing your family and maintaining your household and now the quotidian can be seen as something we can undertake in a spirit of contemplation. These things then become acts of love that can transform us.

In my Love post, I mentioned the importance of accepting what I must do that I neither particularly enjoy nor am able to be especially enthusiastic about doing. Hmm, I need to expand on this. How does doing the daily stuff of life relate to spirituality? I'll be back ... gotta go think about this for a bit. Here's something for you to contemplate while I contemplate laundry and other quotidian stuff.



In his book A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose, Eckhart Tolle says:

Whatever you cannot enjoy doing, you can at least accept that this is what you have to do. Acceptance means: For now, this is what this situation, this moment, requires me to do, and so I do it willingly. ... Performing an action in the state of acceptance means you are at peace while you do it. (p. 296)

Only if you resist what happens are you at the mercy of what happens, and the world will determine your happiness and unhappiness. (p. 200)

The young woman in the YouTube video is certainly not happy, is she? So I ask myself, would I rather complain about doing my laundry today? Or would I rather be at peace?





, Bonnie

P.S. Were you surprised to find "women's work" following my previous post about feminism? Ha!
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